


Soak Up The Sun

by Severina



Category: Live Free or Die Hard (2007)
Genre: Community: smallfandomfest, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-07
Updated: 2011-08-07
Packaged: 2017-10-22 08:06:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/235938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Severina/pseuds/Severina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I got cottage cheese in the fridge that’s got more colour than you.  <i>Outside</i>, kid.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Soak Up The Sun

**Author's Note:**

> Written for LJ's smallfandomfest for the prompt, 'sunshine'

John finally awakens to surprising sunshine on Saturday, in a June that had been filled with enough clouds and rain to make him consider firing up the power tools and starting an ark in the basement. He stretches, yawns, twists his head on the pillow and expects to see Matt spread eagled on his stomach and dead to the world. But the other half of the bed is empty, the sheets cool to the touch.

He gets dressed and splashes water on his face, passes the office and hears the regular, steady tap of Matt’s fingers on the keyboard. Makes his way to the kitchen and flicks on the tiny set on the counter as he makes his coffee, fiddles with the rabbit ears until he can get the weather network.

He has half an eye on the set while he grabs the bread, some kind of 9-grain fibre-rich shit that tastes like styrofoam. “What the fuck’s wrong with Wonder bread?” he asks the room as he shoves two slices into the toaster, and if it’s not bad enough to have Matt lecturing him while he’s actually _there_ , the kid’s voice pops up in his head, reminding him about stripped grain and chemical bleaching agents.

At least if Matt was in the room, instead of in his head, John could shove him against the kitchen table and shut him up. By the time they’re done John usually can’t remember his name, never mind why bleached flour is bad for him. And Matt? Matt usually hops blithely down from the table and smugly reminds John that it was a nice diversion, thanks for that, but he’s still not getting Wonder bread.

Fucking kid.

John swallows a final bite of styro-toast and tosses the rest of it into the trash, walks down the hall and pokes his head into the office. “The weathergirl says it’s going up to eighty-five today. Gonna bring the lawn chairs up from the basement.”

Matt looks up distractedly over the top of the monitor, eyes unfocused, and John knows he’s still stuck somewhere in the land of numbers and squiggles of unknown origin. Then Matt blinks, smiles, and he’s back. “Okay, sure,” he says. “And I think they’re called meteorologists now, John.”

“If that blonde with the tits went to weather school, I’ll eat my fucking badge.”

“Weather schoo—okay, seriously, McClane, meteorologists generally have at least a bachelor’s degree in atmospheric… oh, okay, see, sometimes that _I’m just a big dumb cop_ thing actually gets me. Yeah, nicely done.”

John laughs, raps his knuckles on the doorjamb. “C’mon,” he says, “gimme a hand with the chairs.”

When Matt frowns elaborately, John knows this isn’t going to go well.

“I’m in the middle of some really delicate coding here,” Matt starts. “I’m working on a nomadic number sequence that—“

John blocks out the rest of the explanation – he’s got months of experience now -- and thinks that there are advantages and disadvantages to living with someone who works from home. On the one hand, Matt can adjust his schedule to be available whenever John wants him to – to take in a home game at Yankee stadium, pop over to Matteo’s for lunch, and hell, let’s be honest, the sex was never this frequent with Holly. On the other hand, his office is filled with enough techno gadgetry to power the space shuttle, and when Matt is on a brainiac roll and gets his head buried in ones and zeros it’s almost impossible to pull him out.

“—so I really shouldn’t,” Matt finishes.

John tries anyway. “Is this the part where I remind you that we agreed there’d be no work on the weekends?”

“I don’t know,” Matt says. “Is it also the part where I remind _you_ that you went in _two_ weekends in a row?”

“I’m a cop, kid. Bad guys don’t stick to a schedule.”

“I’m a programmer, McClane. And… I have nothing else to add to that. Except that I really need to get this done.”

John leans against the doorjamb, crosses his arms at his chest. “Uh huh.”

“And it shouldn’t take me that much longer.”

John bows his head, studies the grey industrial carpet. Still a faded red stain from that time Lucy dropped her grape juice, chasing her brother through the house on one of his rare visits with the rug-rats. Never could bring himself to replace the damn carpet.

“And… I love you?”

“Jeeeezus,” John groans. He pushes away from the door, shakes his head and tries to scowl, but the corners of his mouth are twitching anyway, threatening to become a full-blown fucking grin when he looks up and sees the knowing little smirk on Matt’s face.

He lifts a hand in surrender and leaves Matt to his first love.

* * *

John checks in on Matt shortly after ten a.m., finds his eyes still fixated on the screen and his fingers flying over the keys. Thirty minutes later he deposits a tall glass of lemonade on the desk, then has to move it quickly when Matt reaches for his ever-present Red Bull and nearly elbow-checks the glass into oblivion. By noon John has set up the table, washed down all the lawn chairs and set them out to dry in the sun, gathered a garbage bag full of crap from the back lawn and made a mental note to talk to the Crandalls about their mutt and his _literal_ crap in the backyard, checked the propane tank on the barbeque and taken a couple of thick steaks out of the freezer.

It’s time.

He makes his way back into the house and stands in the office doorway for a full minute, watching Matt work.

At some point the kid had grabbed his headphones, not the little earbuds that Lucy uses but giant black and grey pancakes that practically encase his whole head. The first time John saw them, he’d made the mistake of calling Matt “Princess Leia” and he went a whole forty-eight hours with only his hand for company before Matt gave in and forgave him. Now, Matt is so intent on whatever gobbledygook he’s studying on the monitor – and, no doubt, on the screeching wailing noise he calls music blaring from the headphones – that he’s in his own world, and John can watch him without being noticed.

When Matt isn’t behind a keyboard, he never stops moving. But when he’s at work, there’s a still, quiet intensity to him that John appreciates almost as much as the touchy-feely kid who couldn’t keep his mouth shut if he had a gun to his head – a fact proven by the fact that he did have a gun to his head, courtesy of a couple of Gabriel’s goons, and still thought he could be a smartass. That shroud of concentration only falls upon him when he’s doing something that’s important to him, something like working out a complex piece of code or curled on the sofa with his nose buried in a book or lying on the bed, ankles hooked over John’s shoulders, pupils blown wide.

John licks his lips, and when Matt’s tongue peeks out to unconsciously mimic the gesture, John has the overwhelming urge to stop watching and start touching. He pads quietly across the room and rounds the desk, snakes out a hand toward Matt’s head to steal away the headphones. His eyes glance briefly over the monitor… and widen.

World of Warcraft.

Fucking kid.

John reverses, tugs the headphone plug out of the computer instead, and waits for Matt to frown in confusion before leaning against the desk. “Hard at work, I see.”

John would swear before a congressional hearing that Matt jumps half a foot off the chair, then spins around so fast that John actually feels the breeze of it. “What? SHIT. John, wow, I was… no this is… I was on a—“

“That’s it, kid. Move your ass.”

“On a BREAK, I got stuck so—“

John reaches across the desk to snag at Matt’s T-shirt, pulls him bodily out of the chair. Kid might’ve been working out, got a nice little set of biceps now, but his physical protests still amount to an ant taking on a fucking cockroach as far as John is concerned. “You’re getting some sun.”

“What? No, McClane, I don’t want---“

“I got cottage cheese in the fridge that’s got more colour than you. _Outside_ , kid.”

“I gotta shut down my—“

“Outside,” John repeats. He tugs, and Matt might sigh and drag his feet and whine like a fucking twelve year old girl but thirty seconds later they’re in the backyard and the early afternoon sun is beaming down on them, and if John thinks _I win_ … well… nobody’s gotta know that but him.

* ~ * ~ * ~ *

“I hate it when you gloat,” Matt says. “And you know, that whole thing there, with the pulling and the manhandling? That _could_ constitute physical abuse. I wish there was a cop around so I could report it. … OH WAIT.”

“Nice to see the sarcasm gene getting a workout today, kid,” John says.

He’s not even trying to hide the smirk now, and okay, Matt’s well aware that sometimes John thinks he’s some kind of freaky recluse, and okay, maybe occasionally _sometimes_ he spends too much time holed up in the office. But it’s not a prison. He doesn’t need mandated yard time.

Besides, his complexion is so totally not made for direct sunlight. He says as much, which is of course when John whips out the tube and tosses it to him.

“Sunblock,” Matt says drily. “You’re kidding.”

“Non-greasy, hypo allergic, not tested on animals, SPF a fucking hundred—“

“Ohmygod you’re not kidding,” Matt says.

“What?” John says irritably. “There is no fucking way there’s anything on your blocked list in that fucking sunblock.”

“Sure,” he says, “right, nothing. How about the fact that it’s _sunblock_? Do you know what’s IN this stuff? Let me tell you what you want me to put on my body, McClane. Okay, one, retinyl palmitate, proven in an FDA study to speed the development of skin lesions. Two—“

“Matt—“

“—Oxybenzone, causes disruption in hormone balance. Three, petroleum products, McClane, _petroleum_ that actually enters the bloodstream and—“

“Oh for fucks sake.”

When John grabs the tube out of his hand, for a brief moment Matt actually thinks he might have won. Then he’s spinning on his heels as John grabs at the hem of his shirt and whips it off, and whoa, yeah, Matt shouldn’t be surprised at that because there _have_ been times when John’s set land-speed records in getting him undressed in the bedroom, but somehow he never expected it in the middle of the day. On the deck. In the backyard.

“Put your head down,” John says.

He doesn’t wait for Matt to comply before planting his big palm on the back of Matt’s head and pushing down. And fuck, Matt might complain that this manhandling thing is getting out of hand except… kind of hot. So he does what he’s told, even though he feels strangely exposed in the open air, and he shivers when the cold gel hits his back.

“You know,” he says after a moment, when John’s hands are tracing a smooth path over his shoulder blades, “if I just kept my shirt on I wouldn’t need sunblock on my—“

“Shut up,” John says.

And okay, aside from the whole _might suddenly develop festering boils and turn into a raving lunatic_ factor, the whole sunblock thing is actually turning out… not bad. And if you’re going to say not bad, you might as well say good. And he has to admit it _does_ feel good.

Damn sunblock.

He’s not sure how much of the stuff you’re supposed to use, but John’s warm hands have covered every inch of his back, smoothing and kneading and turning various muscle groups to jello. He expects the order to turn around at any moment, and he fully intends to balk and bitch because clearly he’s letting John win this one too easily. But instead John steps up behind him, presses his chest into Matt’s back, reaches around and runs a gelled palm lightly over his pecs, and when Matt opens his mouth to complain what comes out is something more like an undignified squeak.

John rests his chin on his shoulder, and Matt doesn’t have to look to know that he’s smirking. Again.

“Okay,” Matt says after a moment, absurdly pleased that his voice sounds normal, “what is this, the x-rated version of sunblock application?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” John says.

Which is of course when John’s hand dips into his shorts.

His cock is half-hard already – he defies anyone to have that much brawny McClane pressed against them without getting hot, and he regularly thinks (but never says aloud) that Holly must be the biggest fucking tool on the planet for letting this go -- and when John’s blunt fingers wrap around his cock and he starts a slow even stroke, his dick jumps quickly to full steam ahead, all systems go.

Yeah, John’s definitely winning this round too easily.

Matt takes a breath, tries to get himself under control. But John’s head is still propped on his shoulder, warm breath tickling his ear, mouth occasionally dipping down to suck at the tender skin on his neck, unerringly finding the place that sends a shiver down his spine whenever John’s lips brush against it. And John is still stroking him, picking up the tempo now, occasionally rubbing his palm over the head of his dick on the downstroke.

“Yeah,” he tries anyway, and this time, okay, his voice doesn’t exactly sound normal, “my dick isn’t actually… oh fuck it.” He leans back into John’s chest and lets him take the weight. John’s right arm comes up to encircle his waist, and when the left speeds up he reaches around to grasp John’s thigh, bites his lip and closes his eyes and--

“C’mon, Matty,” John murmurs in his ear, and that’s all it takes. He lets go.

Later, sprawled on one of the deck chairs and still trying to catch his breath, he grins over at John. “So,” he says. “Sunblock. I’m… kind of a fan.”

“The shock,” John drawls.

“You know,” Matt muses a moment later, “your scalp is getting a little pink.”

John merely lifts a brow when Matt reaches for the sunblock.


End file.
